


Love and Mercy

by superblackmarket



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 11:51:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3935770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superblackmarket/pseuds/superblackmarket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Oh, she had his number all right. She had his number long before it ever came up. She sat there hugging her knees or legs splayed out in front when she got too big, hating him. Hating the way he ate with his fingers and sucked them clean, hating his broad shoulders and tense posture, hating his long silences and hating the rare moments when he broke them to say something that was always worth listening to.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lori struggles with Daryl's evolving role in the group - and in her husband's heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love and Mercy

Oh, she had his number all right. She had his number long before it ever came up. She sat there hugging her knees or legs splayed out in front when she got too big, hating him. Hating the way he ate with his fingers and sucked them clean, hating his broad shoulders and tense posture, hating his long silences and hating the rare moments when he broke them to say something that was always worth listening to.

God, she hated him.

She hadn’t taken notice of him til it was too late. He was just there, skulking around the periphery, one of them but never _of_ them, nothing to her until everything tilted sideways and what was up came down and what was down began its slow and inexorable ascent upwards.

Of course Shane had to come down, with the way he was behaving it was inevitable. She blamed herself, she had driven him mad and there was never any going back for him. Down he came, betrayed and mutinous. And for a precarious moment there, it was just her husband alone on top of the pedestal. He looked small up there, teetering wildly and grasping at air. He needed someone. Not her. _I trust you to make the right decision._ But what _is_ the right decision? he’d demand, and she didn’t know, she didn’t want to hold anyone’s life in her hand. _Whatever you decide is the right thing._

But then she and Shane were both replaced. One second was all it took. That night, it would be one of their last on the farm, Dale’s eyes wide and pleading in agony, her husband standing above him. Hand shaking. Couldn’t hold the gun steady. The others were screaming. _He’s suffering. Do something!_ But her husband was paralyzed. And then _he_ was there, taking the gun from her husband’s hand and aiming it at Dale. “I’m sorry, brother.”

She should have known then.

Shane was more vigilant. He knew. “You wanna take Daryl as your wingman, be my guest.”

“Thank you,” her husband replied, frosty as November.

And then that moment between them on Hershel’s porch, not meant for anyone else, but she was watching from the window.

The two of them, bent over a map.

Her husband: “Take him out to Senoia. Hour there, hour back, give or take. We may lose the light, but we’ll be halfway home by then.”

Him: “This little pain in the ass’ll be a distant memory. Good riddance.”

Her husband: “Carol’s putting together some provisions for him, enough to last a few days.”

The watched Shane pull up, the two of them on the porch and her from the window. And then her husband, sounding almost tentative: “That thing you did last night-”

And him, squinting up: “Aint no reason you should do all the heavy lifting.”  

Her husband nodded. Nodded like he was trying to convince himself too. He said, dubious: “So are you good with all this?”

Him: “I don’t see you an’ I tradin haymakers on the side of the road. Nobody’d win that fight.”

Her husband looked at him and he stared right back. And then her husband’s face softened with something she hadn’t seen in a long time. Trust. She felt the stab, of sadness as well as jealousy, just below the heart. That was the beginning, the beginning of him not needing her anymore.

Then _him,_ breaking the moment in his usual crude fashion: “Gonna take a piss.”

Hastily she jumped behind the curtain, but she needn’t have bothered. He was striding off around the house, going to take his piss behind a tree, no indoor toilets for him. She sniffed.

But she saw him differently after that, as a person to be reckoned with.

After the farm fell and they found each other again on the highway, her husband finally spilled Jenner’s terrible secret. _We’re all infected. Whatever it is, we all carry it._

And everyone went off, all of them, heaping rage and opprobrium at her husband’s feet. Her too, though she kept her mouth shut and let her eyes do the accusing. _I wanted him dead. I killed him,_ he said _._ And that was it, Shane was gone. She didn’t know which revelation hurt the most. She fed off Glenn’s anger, Maggie’s anger, Carol’s anger.

Everyone except _him._ Oh, he was angry all right, storming off to establish a perimeter, white-knuckling his crossbow. But his anger was universal, vast and target-less, nothing to do with her husband and his secrets. By the time he’d built up a fire in their provisional camp, his narrow features were set in resignation, like he wasn’t even surprised that they were doomed.

Her husband had disappeared somewhere. She held their son and huddled close to the fire.

_He_ was sitting a few feet away, with Carol hovering behind him. “We’re not safe with him,” Carol said, as if she and Carl weren’t right there listening. “Keeping something like that from us.”

Privately she agreed with Carol, but she still felt a flicker of anger at the woman’s temerity to talk about her husband like that in front of Carl. But she was too cold and defeated, too shaken with grief and horror, she couldn’t muster the energy to tell her off. She just pulled her son closer and rocked him gently.

“Why do you need him?” Carol pressed on. “He’s just going to pull you down.”

She glared at Carol, but Carol was too busy looking at _him_ to notice. So that’s what they wanted, the others, they wanted _him_ to take charge, _him_ with his suspicious eyes and unintelligible drawl, _him_ with his crossbow and steady trigger finger and not a god damn responsibility in the world.

But then he surprised her. “No. Rick’s done all right with me,” he said in his rough, gravelly voice. She looked at him, Carl did too, but he was staring into the fire, expression unreadable.

“You’re his _henchman_ ,” Carol accused, the word dirty in her mouth. “And I’m a burden. You deserve better.”

_He_ deserved better? 

“What do you _want_?” he snapped at her.

“A man of honor!”

“Rick has honor,” he said, as if that was the end of it.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. _Wingman. Henchman._ Her husband had found himself a new deputy, it seemed. Why a man like _that_ would be content to fall in line behind her husband she couldn’t fathom.

She remembered their first meeting down at the quarry. Her husband had come back to her and that was everything, but he had also come back to _them_ without Merle Dixon. She was glad for that. She didn’t want either of those Dixons around Carl, with their tempers and their bad mouths and their drugs. Merle was worse than his brother, snorting meth off his buck knife in front of the children, leering at her and Jacqui and Andrea and Amy and the other women like he was undressing them with his eyes. _He’ll rob us in our sleep_ , she told Shane one night. So when her husband came back without Merle Dixon, _Good riddance_ , she thought, at least the worse of the two was gone.

But as it turned out, the more dangerous Dixon brother was still among them.

_Him,_ he’d come out of the woods like a wild thing, more coyote than man, and flung a brace of squirrel carcasses at her husband’s head and drawn a knife on him, until Shane had tackled him from behind and put him in a chokehold, which he had been quick to remind them was _illegal._

_Rick Grimes, you got something you wanna tell me?_

All he seemed to do was throw himself at people in fits of temper, and it fell to her husband to restrain him, pointing a gun at his head often as not.

_What changed_?

Wrapped up in herself, in Carl, in Shane, in winning her husband back, she must have blinked and missed the moment when he became a man to be trusted.

As her husband’s hard eyes swept across their little group of survivors huddled around the campfire that night, _This isn’t a democracy anymore_ , they all cowered a little bit under his merciless gaze. All of them except _him,_ he was staring right back at her husband, calm and level. And her husband nodded him, a tiny, nearly imperceptible tilt of the head. And _he_ nodded back.

And for the rest of that long, freezing winter, he was the only one her husband ever looked to.

That was when she began to hate him in earnest. Her husband consulting with him in a low voice, his back to the rest of them. Effectively shutting them out, shutting her out.

His indifferent solicitousness was the worst. He told her to eat, told her to rest, didn’t designate tasks to her like he did to Beth and even Carl. His cold eyes glided past her as if she was nothing more to him than Maggie or T-Dog. Those blue eyes of his only softened when the landed on Carl. Or _him._

She was damned if her husband didn’t touch him more than any of them. The first time he clapped him on the back, he flinched and nearly levitated off the log he was sitting on. Eyes shocked and feral, clutching his fist to his chest as if he’d just managed not to throw a punch. Her husband had quickly apologized and continued on with what he was saying, and _he_ slowly relaxed, his shoulders creeping down to their normal resting place. That should have been it but her husband was a persistent man. After he learned not to sneak up behind him or risk a broken jaw, he found lots of little ways to touch him. Arm clasp hand clasp shoulder clasp, all the while leaning in confidingly. It was _him_ who would lean away slightly, back up, until he didn’t anymore.

Oh yes, she watched him get comfortable, as the days shortened and the nights lengthened and the air got colder and colder. A new confidence in his step, a concession to intimacy. Now he would stand close to her husband of his own accord, bumping their shoulders together, lightly touching his arm. Saying _Rick?_ in that quiet raspy voice.

Hatred crystallized into something cold and malign in her lungs when she realized _he_ was the one keeping them alive. Not her husband. _Him._

Sure, some of them had maybe gone camping once or twice and they had all learned to be resourceful in the months since the turn, but _surviving_ – out in the open, eating what they could scavenge, a band of gaunt scarecrows making their aimless way through the countryside – that was something else. _He_ was the only one operating with any kind of clarity. Her husband was in charge when they found shelter, but _he_ took point when they slept under the sky. _He_ navigated them through the woods. _He_ showed them how to pitch camp and build a fire. And _he_ kept them fed, the game he shot and the roots and berries and mushrooms he foraged were the only thing standing between them and starvation. In some ways, his responsibilities were greater than her husband’s, but he always deferred to him nonetheless. He never started anything these days, and when one of the others exploded he was there to diffuse it, saying more often than not, _Rick’s right._ What had happened to the man who threw himself at anyone who looked at him cross-eyed?

She watched him, but she was so intent on her husband, and Carl, and what was happening inside her belly that she didn’t realize _he_ watched her, too.

One night, it felt like October, they bedded down in a clearing in the woods somewhere. Couldn’t find a house or a farm that hadn’t been overrun. Supplies running low, just a couple scrawny rabbits and squirrels he had shot. Carol divvied up the meager portions. Her husband put nearly half his share on Carl’s plate, and she watched their son devour the food. Her stomach rumbled and she looked down at the scraps of stringy meat on her tin plate. She ate without tasting. She ate with her hands now too. It was gone too quickly and if anything her stomach felt more hollow than before. She rested a hand on her belly, just beginning to swell, and wondered how much longer the baby would make it.

“Here.” He was standing over her. He thrust his own untouched plate into her hands. “Aint hungry.” Then he was gone.

She ate, she couldn’t help herself.

Wrapped in a bedroll, Carl in her arms, she lay awake. Not from hunger. The pangs in her belly weren’t so bad that night. He and her husband were sharing watch, and she listened to them conversing in low voices.

“I’m sorry,” her husband said. “You shouldn’t have had to do that. I’ll give her mine, next time.”

“What about your boy?” he said.

“Half to her and half to Lori.”

“An’ what about you?” he said.

“They need it more’n me. I’ll make do.”

He snorted. “That so?”

“They’re my family. Should be my responsibility,” her husband said.

 

“I thought we was runnin this Commie-style,” he said. “One big happy family, from each, to each, all that shit. You goin bourgeois on me, Rick?”

So maybe he was smart too, well, how was she supposed to know when he usually communicated through grunts like a Neanderthal? She didn’t feel guilty, she didn’t, for saying to Maggie the other day, “I wonder if he can even _read_.”

“ _No_ ,” her husband insisted. “But my wife’s pregnancy isn’t your fault, you shouldn’t be the one to pay for it.”

Tears sprang to her eyes and she hugged Carl more tightly.

“Aint the kind of thing worth assigning blame over,” he said. “Lil Shane, lil Rick, don’t make much difference. Only thing what matters is keeping it alive.”

She hated him. She hated him so god damn much.

“I know,” her husband said heavily. She could imagine him rubbing his temples, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just feel bad that you’re making the sacrifice.”

“There’s an art to starvation,” he told her husband. “You gotta do it proper. This aint my first lean winter, Rick, I aint about ta keel over. ‘Sides,” he continued, “s’only temporary, this. One of these days I’ll bring down a deer and-”

“What?”

“Thought I heard something.”

“Walkers?”

“Nah. Probly a rabbit. I’ll get it tomorrow.”

Every mealtime after that, it seemed, he’d slink over to her and dump his food on her plate – “aint hungry” – and slink away. _There’s an art to starvation._ When they did have enough to go round, he always ate last, making sure everyone else had taken their share first. Even her husband; he’d tell him to eat up if he left anything on his plate.

She wondered what they did, he and her husband, all those long, cold nights they stayed up together.

In December (it felt like December), they cleared a dilapidated roadside motel that would be their home for the next month. It was too exposed, too flimsy to be permanent, but it was something, something to shield them from the bitterness of midwinter. She felt hot and feverish despite the cold, combing the sweaty hair back from her face.

As they settled in, he snuck up behind her, noiseless as always.

“How ya feelin?” he said, making her jump.

“Fine,” she said, hand automatically going to her belly.

“Heard ya coughin the other night,” he said. “Been savin these.” He reached inside his jacket and offered her a bottle of ibuprofen.

“I’m fine,” she told him. “Save it for Carl, or Beth-”

“Carl’n Beth are fine,” he said. “You’re the priority.”

“Save them for later,” she insisted.

“Can’t get sick, not with the baby,” he said stubbornly, and his narrow blue eyes tunneled into her like lasers.

“I’m not sick, Daryl.” Her breasts were tender and sore; she folded her arms over her chest and glared.

“ _Christ_! Am I the only one who gives a fuck about this baby?” Glenn and T-Dog, unloading one of the cars, looked around in surprise at the sound of his raised voice.

“You don’t _have_ to give a fuck about this baby,” she hissed back. “One thing I can say for sure, it’s certainly not _yours._ So why do you care so much?”

His eyes skittered away from her, and for a moment he looked like his old Atlanta self, scowling and hostile. “Just think the kid deserves a chance,” he mumbled. He shoved the bottle into her hand and stomped off somewhere, probably to find her husband.

It was always about the baby. It was always about the baby for her husband too. If anyone asked how she was, it was only with an eye toward the thing taking shape in her belly.

She had hoped things would change, now that they had a (temporary) roof over their heads. _He_ and Glenn had gone on a wildly successful run. They’d stumbled on an abandoned canning factory and returned with a carful of canned goods, which guaranteed them a week or two of not starving. A roof, a bed, food – but nothing changed. Her husband was as distant as ever. In their cramped, chilly room, she and Carl shared one bed, and her husband slept in the other.

It wasn’t even sex she hoped for. That instinct seemed to have gone dormant in both of them, in all of them, really, except for Glenn and Maggie. Who went at it like they were going to repopulate the world just the two of them. She hoped they took better care than she did with Shane. _He_ went crashing down the hallway, banging on doors, bellowing “Coitus Interruptus!” whenever he wanted one of them for something. Less decorum than an ape. But it was one of the only things that brought a smile to her husband’s face.

She spent most of her days huddled inside with a blanket. Watching through the window as the others went about their tasks, warm breath clouding the air in front of them.

_He_ seemed to spend as little time indoors as possible, despite the cold. He was always prowling off somewhere, hunting, taking watch on the roof, pacing the perimeter. Always the first to volunteer for a supply run. Fixing the cars, hammering pieces of wood across broken windows, obsessing over his ugly motorcycle, whittling Hershel a walking stick when the old man turned his ankle – he seemed desperate to keep busy, moving. Showing off for her husband, making himself invaluable. If they were on a reality show like _Survivor_ instead of this real hell, _he_ wouldn’t be getting voted off the island any time soon. The rest of them could drop like flies until it was just him and her husband, which was probably the way he wanted it.

One day her husband was chopping wood and the handle of hit hatchet snapped off. He cursed violently and then _he_ was there, saying, “Don’t shit it, Rick, I’ll have it fixed in a few.”

She crept up to him while he was bent over the hatchet. “What, Lori?” he grunted, his back to her. Of course she couldn’t sneak up on him.

“I wish you would stop trying to impress my husband,” she said, with all the coldness she could muster. “You’re not fooling anyone, especially not me.”

He swung around, confusion stamped all over his face.

She glared at him. Watched the confusion change to hostility.

“Aint tryna _impress_ your husband,” he said tersely.

Not a flicker of guilt in his eyes. Just wariness. He had no idea what she was talking about.

“I mean-” she flushed. Anger and shame were so close together these days. “Why are you always doing so much?”

“Rick’s done well by me,” he said slowly. “Just tryna pull my weight.”

“ _Pull your weight_?” she jeered, her worst self rising to the surface. “You’re already Rick’s lieutenant, what more do you want? In charge of this group, is that it? Or do you want to be his new best friend? Well, let me tell you, Rick doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to best friends, and he certainly isn’t looking for a replacement.”

She saw his face redden, felt his temper surge like an electrical charge. But then he bit his lower lip and in an act of obvious willpower, got control over himself. “Take a good look round you, Mrs. Sheriff,” he said flatly. “You an’ Carl an’ Rick. Hershel an’ Beth. Maggie an’ Glenn, good as hitched. Carol, she’s in. T, been with Rick since the beginning. And then there’s me. Probly pulled on half’a ya ‘fore we even left Atlanta. Think I don’t know what y’alls thinkin? _Redneck trash._ I aint yer kin, I aint yer blood, hell, I aint even yer same fucken species! I aint tryna make friends, I’m tryna keep my ass from bein rode out on a rail.”

“Daryl-” she began.

“S’like m’brother always said, one a these days y’all gonna scrape me off yer heels like dogshit, soon as you got yerselves a cosy little place to hunker down. So yer damn right, Lori, I better pull my weight or I’m out on my ass.”

“Daryl, that’s – that’s – _not true_ ,” she stammered. He was looking down, his lengthening hair shielding his eyes. “You’re – you _know_ you’re essential to the group.”

“Yeah, fer keeping _your_ sorry asses fed. Aint under no illusions lady, I know I don’t mean shit ta no one.”

“Carol cares,” she said. “Glenn cares.” _Dale cared._ “And Rick.”

He shrugged.

“I’m sorry – you know I didn’t mean it like that-”

“Course ya did,” he said shortly. His eyes were like concrete.  

 

“I just-” Tears were pricking at her eyes and she fought them, desperate not to humiliate herself further in front of this man, so cold and cut off. “I just want my husband back,” she whispered.

“Give him time, an’ he’ll come.” Of course he knew what she was talking about, he saw everything with those strange narrow eyes of his. He didn’t even look mad anymore. “Rick’s playin this the only way he knows how, an’ if keepin everyone alive means we’re livin under austerity, well, that’s how it is.”

“You have an explanation for everything, don’t you?” she said thickly. The tears were falling free and fast now.

“’S just a guess.” He fished in his pocket and handed her the rag he used to polish his crossbow 

“Do I want to know where this has been?” she asked, mopping her face anyway.

“Nope,” he said. “Promise I don’t use it fer jackin, though.”

It was the beginning of the thaw, even though winter was colder than ever.

But then Carl started to slip between her fingers.

He wanted his _space_ , his _independence_ , which was normal for a boy his age, and she would have granted it willingly if the world had been what it was. But in this world she was afraid for him every second. He modeled himself after his father, marching around the motel with his gun holstered to his leg, trying to help and getting underfoot. And when his father rebuffed him he was undaunted, because he had a new hero.

_Him._

Carl buzzed around _him_ like a hungry little mosquito, suddenly entranced by everything, from his motorcycle to his winged leather vest to his crossbow to his tattoos. “Hey, Daryl…” he’d say, and mostly he swatted him away with a terse “beat it, brat.” But Carl never seemed to take it personally, like he did when she told him off, or her husband. With this man he was impervious, and occasionally his persistence would be rewarded. “C’mere kid, Imma show you how ta sharpen that knife of yours.” Or, “Get over here, brat, time fer you ta butcher a squirrel.” And amazingly, her son would do what he was told without question. Face screwed up, he carefully gutted the tiny squirrel corpse, didn’t throw up til he’d finished, and proudly ate a share after it was cooked over the fire.

And in the end, it was really him who taught Carl how to shoot, not her husband. Because for all his bravado, Carl was actually afraid to draw his gun now. Last thing he had shot was Shane. One day she heard him telling her son, “You did what you had to do an’ yer gonna hafta do it again, so buck up, ya hear me?” On one of the runs he’d picked up a silencer, which he fitted on Carl’s gun. The next morning she was outraged to learn he had taken her son deep into the woods so he could practice on walkers.

She found her husband conferring with Glenn. “Rick, Daryl’s taken Carl out. For _target practice_ ,” she told him, shaking with fear and anger.

Glenn’s eyebrows shot up.

“Yeah, I know,” her husband said. “Told Daryl it was okay, long as they’re back before dusk.”

“You told him it was _okay_?” she shrieked. Glenn shifted his weight, clearly wishing himself elsewhere.

“It was a lucky shot, him putting Shane down,” her husband said. She flinched to hear that name on his lips, so dispassionately. “He might not get lucky again, and Daryl’s the best one to teach him.”

“Why not…” she cast about. “Why not _Glenn_? You’re a good shot.”

Glenn rubbed his hands awkwardly. “Not as good as Daryl. He’s better with kids anyway. I’m gonna find T,” he excused himself, leaving them to it.

“Daryl, good with kids?” she snapped.

“You saw what he was like about Sophia. He won’t let anything happen to Carl.” Her husband already seemed to be thinking about something else.

“You trust him out in the woods with our son?”

“Of course I do,” he replied, and when their eyes met she was nearly knocked backward by what he left unsaid. _More than you._

Furious and betrayed, she might have fallen to hating him again, but she never got the chance. The next morning T-Dog came sprinting back from a perimeter check to announce there was a large herd of walkers to the north, moving this way. So they threw their belongings in the cars and then they were on the run again. Him scouting ahead on the motorcycle, the rest of them following behind in the cars.

She could see her own despair mirrored on Carol’s face, on Beth’s. But with every cold day and freezing night, she could see the others drawing on deep reserves of strength and rising to the occasion. Hershel, resilient and uncomplaining, putting any reservations aside and firmly staking her husband. Maggie had shown herself a force to be reckoned with, a crack shot with a rifle and fearless in taking down walkers. Glenn, always quick and resourceful, never down for long. T, steady and reliable, meticulous in everything he did. Her brave little son, always determined to help, growing up fast, too fast. And _him._

She supposed they were starving again, because he resumed giving her his food. Her husband gave Carl his, and Hershel, Maggie, and Glenn took turns sharing their portions with Beth. She felt ashamed to be treated as one of the children, and considered defying him. He must’ve seen it in her face one morning when he was scraping cold beans onto her plate, because he said, “Don’t even think about it.”

They were starting to look like wraiths. His face was gaunt. She could see the contours of his skull, his high cheekbones standing out like they were carved from marble. But he never complained, never acted fatigued. Maybe he was right, there was an art to starvation.

One she didn’t possess. She had to admit it to herself, she was struggling now. Her belly was growing bigger while the rest of her shrank. Her wrists looked spindly and bony like a child’s, and each one of her knuckles stood out against her skin. The extremes of her body were grotesque, she could see it in her husband’s eyes, the barely concealed revulsion. She couldn’t blame him, she was grotesque to herself too. Hershel looked concerned, though he tried his best to hide it. Her back ached and her clothes no longer fit properly. Carol had the idea of opening up her jeans and extending the waist with patches, which provided some relief. After they stopped for the night, sometimes she would creep a short distance away to sob with exhaustion and fear.

Of course it was _him_ who caught her at it one night, bow at the ready. “Thought you was a walker,” he said, looking uncomfortable. But he put a rough hand on her shoulder, which was more than he offered to anyone except Carol and her husband.

Over the next couple weeks, she began to wonder if he wasn’t, in fact, her ally. Part of her maintained that everything he did for her, he did for her husband. But the rest of her was starting to come round to the idea that he saw her as a person in her own right, not just as a burden or a rival for her husband’s attention. And, she thought bitterly, her husband sought _him_ out far more than he ever imposed on her husband. In fact, she couldn’t remember him ever asking for anything.

He helped her in and out of the car, was quick to take her pack from her, and when walkers ran them out of wherever it was they were staying, he would grab her arm and haul her along with him. Once he had even carried her bride style, fat belly and all, when she couldn’t lumber along fast enough. They all laughed about it later, but it had been a close call. Her husband squeezed her hand and she felt a spark of hope, but then he was turning away again.

“I wish you would talk to me, Rick,” she pleaded. “We can’t go on like this.”

“When we find a place.” Her husband ran an absent hand through his wavy hair, making it stand on end. “Soon as we find a place, we’ll talk, I promise.”

She nodded, resigned. “I doubt we’ll run into a divorce lawyer any time soon.”

He offered her a small, pained smile. “I’ll always take care of you. And the baby.”

Another few weeks and they were still alive. The bone-chilling cold was lifting and she began to think of spring. She was in her second trimester by now, probably. Growing ever larger and more ungainly. But the winter had stiffened her spine, and she felt a new determination to pull through, to survive. Carol and Beth seemed to feel it too, and their group was beginning to operate like a well-oiled machine. Not just the strong ones dragging the rest of them along, but _all_ of them, in it together.

She wasn’t going to be a burden, she decided, remembering Carol’s words from the campfire last fall. When her husband looked at her now she saw respect in his eyes. Not the affection she so craved, but respect was better than indifference.

When they clambered out of the cars to camp in an old barn that afternoon, she tucked her pistol in the back of her jeans and pulled a bundle of blankets out of the truck.

“That’s a stupid fucken place to put a gun.” He had materialized next to her, scowling. “Gonna blow an ass cheek off if you aint careful.” He took the blankets from her despite her protests, and said over his shoulder, “Show you how to fire that thing if ya want.”

She went to her husband, laying out provisions in the barn. “Daryl offered to teach me how to shoot.”

“I think that’s a great idea.” He gave her an almost-smile. “Never really got down to it properly at the farm, did we?”

So she went back to him and told him yes. He borrowed Carl’s gun with its silencer and took her round the back of the barn, where he set her shooting at hay bales. He was quiet and patient, adjusting her stance and the angle of her arms until her aim improved. He never touched her, his hands always a millimeter away from making contact with her, but she felt their steady heat nonetheless. Carl came out and watched for a bit, cheering her on before wandering back inside to eat. She had just managed to shatter a bottle, her most difficult target yet, when she felt it.

“Oh my god,” she gasped. She felt suddenly light and dreamy, all her focus turned inward. “Oh my god. Daryl, come here.”

“What’s wrong?” he jogged over to her, concerned.

“Give me your hand.” Looking more befuddled than ever, he did. She took his hand and pressed it against her belly, holding fast when he tried to jerk away from the intimacy of it. “Feel.”

Tentatively he did, palm resting against her, fingers spread over the swell of her stomach. And then the man actually _smiled._ Not smirk or a sneer or one of the lopsided lip-quirks he used to indicate amusement, but a real smile that made him look younger and not so dangerous. “Fucken hell, is that-”

“Yeah,” she told him, beaming right back.

“ _Damn_ ,” he breathed, looking awestruck. “It hurt?”

“No,” she told him. “I’m just so glad – it should’ve happened sooner, and I was afraid-”

“Yeah, she’s in there all right,” he said, adjusting his hand. “That was a strong un, jus’ now.”

“She?”

“’S a girl. Damn sure of it,” he said.

“What makes you so sure?” She couldn’t stop smiling. Her cheeks were starting to ache, having grown unused to joy.

“Well you already got a boy.” He shrugged. “Jus’ feels like a girl, is all.”

They stood there, the both of them utterly transfixed, a while longer. Unexpected that it was _him_ , of all people, to share this with her, the first to feel the baby kick. Not her husband, not Hershel, not Carl. But she found she didn’t mind, because the look of boyish wonder on his harsh, guarded face was somehow the greatest affirmation she could have desired.

At last he said, “You gotta show Rick.”

“Yeah,” she said, her smile drooping.

He hung back as she went inside. Rick was sitting with Hershel and she hurried over to them. “It’s quickened,” she said. “The baby. She’s kicking.”

Her husband smiled at her, but the look in his eyes was so sad she felt her own tearing up, and this time not from joy. She grabbed his hand put it against her. “ _She_?” Hershel said.

“I think it’s a girl,” she said, suddenly as certain as he had been. Her husband removed his hand after a kick or two and retreated a little, but she was grateful he had tried.

Then everyone was clustered around her. Hershel, complimenting her on the baby’s strong, healthy kick. Carol, tears running down her face as her own memories resurfaced. “I’m so happy for you,” Carol said, and she felt their friendship click firmly into place again. Beth and Maggie could hardly take their hands off of her, cooing excitedly. Carl, face alight with curiosity, fascinated by the persistent drumming of tiny heels. And then Glenn and T-Dog, awkward and blushing, both asking politely if they might feel the baby kick, please. She didn’t mind all the hands running over her stomach. It was their miracle, shared by all of them. She remembered what _he_ had said to her husband months ago, voice dripping with irony: “One big happy family.” And in that moment, she knew it to be true.

She was aware of him too, lurking in the doorway, not joining in but present nonetheless. She looked up to meet his eyes and he still looked half-hypnotized with amazement.

The baby’s affirmation of new life reinvigorated all of them. Even her husband, who seemed almost afraid to feel the life inside her, but pleased nonetheless. She wondered, fleetingly, if his happiness wasn’t more like Glenn and T-Dog’s than that of an expectant father, but she accepted the stilted, erratic tenderness he showed her nonetheless. She let herself hope that the baby’s arrival would resolve everything gone wrong between them.

And _him._ He still watched her all the time, almost as much as he watched her husband. He was too shy, too reticent, to march up and ask to feel the baby again, so she made sure to offer most days. And each time he lit up inside and placed his hand gently against her stomach. He didn’t talk to the baby like the others did, but when his eyes went all distant and unfocused, she was sure that he was communing with it – _her_ – in his own way.

She had forgotten how to hate him, and the days grew warmer.

But they were starving again. She was back to eating his food. No game until he sighted a deer but it was only a faun and he hesitated, mouth tight, but pulled the trigger anyway. Walked back to them with heavy steps, the small beautiful thing carried tenderly over his shoulder. Butchered it like a ceremony. Carl and Beth had both cried, she had to hold her own tears back, but for the next two days they had rations. Then back to hunger. She would never forget the look on her husband’s face when he dashed a can of expired dog food from their son’s hand.

Summer, and the baby kept kicking. When he and her husband found the prison, she couldn’t help feeling it was the baby’s momentum that had brought them there. And not a moment too soon, either, Hershel estimated she was nearly full term.

Life was taking on the same hazy quality that she remembered preceding Carl’s birth. She knew they cleared the yard, and the next day they cleared one of the cell blocks. She knew she’d helped, because he had said _nice shooting_ and her husband patted her arm. But it was all so vague and dreamy, at least it was until Hershel.

She surprised herself, the way she snapped into action and took charge. She wasn’t even thinking of the baby in that moment, only of Hershel and his terrified daughters, and she resolved then and there that she wouldn’t let him die. Carol came to her aid and they bandaged his leg, managed to slow the bleeding. Discreetly, she felt his forehead for any sign of fever.

Her husband and he were dealing with those inmates they’d found in the other block, where Hershel had been bitten. She left him under Carol’s eye and went out to join her husband in the hallway. He was tense, sweating, and when she asked him what their options were, _kill ‘em_ , her husband said dully. But he was standing close to her, _looking_ to her, like he used to do so long ago.

She didn’t want to play executioner, the thought sickened her just as much as it had back at the farm. So she gave him one of her usual non-answers, but this time it wasn’t an evasion. It was one of the most sincere things she had ever said to him. _Look, I know that I’m a shitty wife, and I’m not winning any Mother of the Year awards, but I need you to know that not for one second do I think there’s malice in your heart. You’re not a killer, and I know that. I know that so… so do whatever you gotta do to keep this group safe, and do it with a clear conscience._

And her husband nodded, like she’d helped him make up his mind. And he went back to it.

Then she brought Hershel back, when he stopped breathing.

Afterwards she stood on the bridge, exhaling deeply and feeling the sun on her skin. Her husband joined her a while later and she hoped, she hoped –

“We’re awful grateful for what you did,” he said, and went back inside.

She felt a great heaviness descend on her, a heaviness that didn’t lift for days.

Hershel recovered quickly, quicker than a man his age had any right to do, and soon he was ready to try the crutches that had been fashioned for him. Hope was contagious, like spring all over again. But she couldn’t go back in time to spring, for her it was midsummer, and midsummer told her it was past time. She knew she was overdue now. This baby would probably be a c-section, just like Carl had been. With Hershel stronger each day – maybe they would do it tomorrow. Or the next day. Her mother had always said she wasn’t built for childbirth.

She and Beth and Carl helped Hershel out to the courtyard, to feel the sun on his face, and they promenaded around in great style, Hershel commenting on how the place was staring to feel like home already. She shaded her eyes and saw her husband standing by the fence. She smiled, she couldn’t help herself, the day was beautiful and they’d managed to give death the slip once again.

Her husband smiled back at her and she blushed, just like she had when they first started dating all those years ago. Just kids then, with their whole lives ahead of them.

The heaviness lifted a little.

_He_ was standing next to her husband, watching him like he always did. Her husband stretched, reaching his arms above his head, a sliver of pale midsection coming into view.

And then she saw it. The naked longing on his face as he looked at her husband. The way his eyes ran along her husband’s body and flickered back to his face, blazing with hope and trust and desire.

She clutched her belly, the smile still frozen on her mouth.

He loved her husband. Of course he did.

All the months she spent hating him, begrudging every moment he spent with her husband, assigning to him all sorts of base ulterior motives – somehow in all of that, it never crossed her mind, she never saw anything remotely sexual in him, she had never _once_ considered –

He loved her husband.

He never asked for anything, rarely gave any indication of having feelings _at all –_

She looked at him then, really _looked_ at him, beyond the familiar outline of the person she took for granted as _Daryl_ , and was taken aback by what she saw.

His body, broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hips. Lean and powerful as a coiled spring. In the blazing heat he was shucked down to one of his sleeveless shirts and his muscular arms gleamed in the sunlight. She had no idea what lay beneath, he never took off his clothes, not even his shirt, around anyone else, but she could imagine smooth, hard planes of muscle, stretching and flexing as he moved. Beautiful.

His face, something crooked and faintly asymmetrical about it, like he’d been in one too many fights and never healed properly after. But an arresting face, nonetheless, with those prominent cheekbones and thin mobile lips. The narrow eyes which she’d once found squinty and mean she now saw for what they were – a striking, amorphous blue, capable of a stare more piercing than her husband’s.

The rest of him, how he moved like a panther, silent and graceful and deadly. He moved like sex, even if he didn’t know it.

And he loved her husband.

He must have felt her staring because he turned suddenly and their eyes locked. Immediately he knew that she knew. He flushed and his face screwed up in abject guilt and shame. Caught out, completely in her power.

And she realized she did not hate him.

Then Carl screamed. “Walkers! Look out!”

When she lay on the cold cement floor, the baby fighting to get out of her, her son sobbing at her side, she made the final choice left to her and hoped it was the right one for the right reasons. After all her years of diffidence, of non-answers, this was the most important decision she had ever made in her life. _I’m not losing my baby._

Maggie shook her head furiously, crying too.

She turned to her son, her beloved brave boy-no-longer-a-boy. _You take care of your daddy for me, all right? And your little brother or sister, you take care…_  

There was regret, an ocean of it, for her son and for the husband she would never make amends with now.

And then she saw _him_ too, blue eyes steady and trusting and full of emotion for the man they both loved. _Take care of my husband_ , she thought. She remembered his hand on her belly, his face alight with wonder and joy. _Take care of my boy, Daryl, take care of my baby. Promise me, Daryl! My baby, my boy, my husband._

And then focusing on her son. _You’re the best thing I ever did!_ Saying her goodbyes, standing on the brink of forever. _I love you._ Readying herself. Not afraid anymore. _You’re my sweet, sweet boy._

It was now, and Carl held her hand.

Then the knife descended. Death was a mercy.

 

xxx

 

\- Rick, you with me? Rick?

_\- Let me see the baby._

\- What’re we gonna feed it? We got anything a baby can eat?

\- _The good news is she looks healthy. But she needs formula. And soon, or she won’t survive._

\- No. No way. Not her. We aint losin nobody else. I’m goin for a run.

\- _I’ll back you up._

_\- I’ll go too._

\- Okay, think where we’re goin.

Beth. Kid just lost his mom. His dad aint doin so hot.

\- _I’ll look out for him._

\- You two get the fence. Too many pile up, we got ourselves a problem. Glenn, Maggie, vámanos! Get the gate. C’mon, we’re gonna lose the light!

 

\- _Guys, they’re back!_

\- How’s she doin?

Shh, shh, shh. C’mon. C’mon. There.

She got a name yet?

\- _Not yet. But I was thinking maybe Sophia. Then there’s Carol, too. And… Andrea. Amy. Jacqui. Patricia. Or… Lori. I don’t know._

\- You like that? Huh? Lil ass-kicker. Right? That’s a good name, right? Lil ass-kicker. You like that, huh? You like that, sweetheart?

  

\- You know, my mom, she liked her wine. She liked to smoke in bed. Virginia Slims. I was playin out with the kids in the neighborhood. I could do that with Merle gone. They had bikes, I didn’t. We heard sirens gettin louder. They jumped on their bikes, ran after it, you know, hoping ta see something worth seein. I ran after them, but I couldn’t keep up. I ran round a corner and saw my friends lookin at me. Hell, I saw everybody lookin at me. Fire trucks everywhere. People from the neighborhood. It was my house they were there for. It was my mom in bed burnt down ta nuthin. That was the hard part. Ya know, she was just gone. Erased. Nuthin left of her. People said it was better that way. I dunno. Just made it seem like it wasn’t real, ya know?

\- _I shot my mom. She was out. Hadn’t turned yet. I ended it. It was real._

_Sorry about your mom._

\- I’m sorry bout yours.

 

xxx

 

He was stretched on his front, warm and naked in Rick’s bed.

There was blood on the pillowcase. An old wound on his shoulder had reopened while they fucked.

He pointed it out to Rick, who grinned at him lazily. “Want me to hang it from the window, so everyone can see what we did?”

“Dunno if you can say I was a virgin,” he pointed out, but Rick looked at him very tenderly and said, “You were to me.”

It had been a long time coming, this, with a series of false starts and misunderstandings and poorly timed fumbles in vacant cells. Usually it was Rick who started things, but this time it was all him.

He’d followed Rick back to his cell late that afternoon, after Rick had finished playing farmer down in his garden. Pulled the curtain shut behind them. It was quiet on the cell block, most of the prison population outdoors enjoying the weather.

He looked at Rick, sweaty and sunburnt.

“Can I…?”

“Yes. Please.”

Rick had just eaten a tomato. It was sweet and tangy on his tongue.  

More. Further than before.

“You sure this is what you want?”

“I’m sure.”

Clothes abandoned. Naked together on the bed. Hands in everything. Him clutching at the bed as Rick sucked him off.

The scars on his back forgotten. Muscles standing out under sweaty skin. Stronger than Rick, but elated and aroused to suddenly feel himself the weaker.

Wanting to go even further.

“Now.”

“Are you sure?”

Soft afternoon light drifting in between the bars.

“Now or I’ll lose my nerve.”

Fumblings.

“ _Olive oil_? You gotta be fucken kidding me.”

Olive Oyl. He’d called _her_ that once, when he was good and pissed.

“Short notice.”

Breath coming quickly, shaking with the reckless desire to be fucked, and now.

“Easy, now, easy. Just let me kiss you, c’mon. That’s it.”

The oil was cold and strange.

It hurt. Christ, it hurt. Until it didn’t anymore.

Tears still wet on his cheeks, eyes widening in shock. Rick above him, around him, inside him.

“You okay?”

“Shaddup an’ _move_ , Rick.”

Moving, slapping noisily together.

“Aint gonna break.”  

Like nothing ever before. Beyond words.

_I love you._

Rick stroking him now too, driving him wild.

“Gonna… gonna…”

“I love you.”

But that was Rick, not him. He’d said it in his head.

Coming. Coming all over them both.

Then Rick, inside him. White light white heat.

Drifting back to earth. Blood on the pillowcase.

Now lying stretched on his front, warm and naked in Rick’s bed.

That’s how it had happened, more or less.

“She knew,” he said, shifting to look at Rick. “Lori.”

Rick shook his head. “No way she could have. You and me – we didn’t, not until months after she …”

“You didn’t. I did.”

“… How long?”

“Sometime during that winter, I’unno.”

“Jesus, you never said anything.”

_Don’t be stupid,_ he said with his eyes. _Of course I fucken didn’t._

“Didn’ realize it was sex, though, what I wanted,” he said. “That came later.”

“And Lori…”

“She knew. Caught me lookin at ya that day, right b’fore it happened. Read me like a goddam book. Saw it on her face that she knew.”

Rick didn’t say anything, just folded his arms behind his head at stared up at the bottom of the bunk above them. His jaw was tight. He didn’t like to talk about _her_ with him, but he, Daryl, could see her, feel her, everywhere around them. In Carl. In Judith, who looked nothing like Rick or Shane and everything like _her._

And he didn’t see any reason to pretend otherwise, sex or no sex.

“She wasn’t mad,” he said. “She saw how I wanted ya and she wasn’t mad.”

“You gave a damn about the baby when I didn’t,” Rick said, with just a trace of bitterness. “She was probably counting on it.”

“Kept the baby alive for _you_ , Rick, for when you was ready for her.” He sighed in frustration. Probably the worst pillow talk in history. But he had to do right by _her_ , even though he felt itchy and uncomfortable in his skin.“Thought you’d be glad.”

“About what?”

“Ta know that what we’re doin, it aint betrayin her. Couldn’ live with it, otherwise.”

“ _You_ couldn’t live with it?” Rick was getting pissed now.

“Cared about her,” he said simply.

Rick’s nostrils flared, and he was thinking _here we go, he’s gonna throw me outta his bed fer talkin outta turn_ , but then the lines of his face shifted and he actually smiled a bit. “I’m glad you did.” Rick reached over and smoothed the sweaty, matted hair over his forehead. “Real glad…”

Rick licked his lips, he wanted to kiss him. So he rolled onto his back and stretched his long limbs languidly, to show Rick he was up for more than kissing, if Rick wanted.

Rick’s eyes flickered down to his cock, resting hard against his belly. Licked his lips again. All but pounced, covering his scarred, tattooed body with his own smooth one.

He bit down on Rick’s earlobe and sucked, making Rick moan and buck against him. “Wanna give it another go?” he whispered. “Switch it up?”

“Switch it up?” Rick looked tentative, but his cock, pressing into his thigh, told a different story.

“Yeah. Me inside you.” He paused. “Slow this time. Eyes open. Aint gonna let ya forget who you’re fucking.”

“As if I could forget.” Rick laughed softly. “Yeah. Alright.”

Open eyes, open mouths. Working Rick open. Rick digging his nails into his shoulder. Sliding his cock and his tongue in as deep as Rick could take them.

Rocking together.

Better this time, slower.

They shouldn’t fit like this, but they did. Rick’s legs clamped tight around his waist.

Determined to make it last. Harder, not faster.

_I love you_ in his head.

“Please…”

“Go on, Rick. You first.”

Figuring it out, how to fuck and stroke at the same time. Making him writhe and shake, pull his hair, shout his name.

“Jesus fuck, _Daryl_ …”

Then he let go, too.

After, they twined their sweaty limbs together. He dipped a finger in the cum Rick had shot on his belly and tasted. Bitter. He wrinkled his nose, and Rick laughed at him. He arched his back, feeling the sting for the first time.

Rick had mauled him like a tiger, opening up his flesh. Fresh blood sprinkled the sheets.

“I’m sorry,” Rick whispered, aghast. “God, I’m so-”

“Don’t be.” He shrugged. “First time I’ve had any say in what goes on my back. Means I did a good job, right? Fucked you good?”

“Real good,” Rick confirmed. “Beyond words.”

They kissed more, deep and long.

“Gonna get back to it,” he said at last, sliding out of bed. He felt Rick’s eyes on him, checking out his ass, as he pulled his pants on.

“Get back to what? Know it’s not your watch.”

“Carl,” he said, buttoning his shirt. “Told the kid I’d show him blackjack tonight.”

“You got us all under your wing, don’t you?” Rick looked up at him, all tousled and sultry. “Momma bird?”

“Aint no stupid fucken bird.” He bent down to lace his boots, hiding his face so Rick wouldn’t see him smile. “Promised, is all. Promised her I’d take care of you an’ the kids.”

“When did you promise her that?” Rick didn’t look angry, this time, when he mentioned _her_ , just tender and curious.

“Not exactly the kinda thing that got put into words.” He kissed him quickly but firmly. “Why dontcha go see what Asskicker’s up to, huh?”

He always walked the fences, last thing before he went to sleep. A final check, making sure everyone was safe. When he turned back, he saw Rick at the window, candlelit. In the act of hanging out a bloodied sheet. To show the whole prison what glorious thing had happened today, if only they were awake to see it.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading - hope you enjoyed! As always, I love feedback from you guys.


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